University of Padua

The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by students and masters who left Bologna in search of greater academic freedom, a founding act still echoed in its motto Universa universis patavina libertas. It is the second-oldest university in Italy and among the oldest surviving anywhere, and it shaped early modern European science: Galileo Galilei taught here, Andreas Vesalius transformed anatomy here, and the world's oldest surviving anatomical theatre, built in 1594, remains inside Palazzo Bo. Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia graduated at Padua in 1678, the first woman in the world to take a university degree. Today it is a large public research university with about 76,000 students, roughly eleven percent of them international, spread across 32 departments and eight schools, with more than 250 buildings, 30 libraries and 45 study rooms distributed through Padua and the wider Veneto region. It offers some 210 degree courses and postgraduate programmes, plus the selective Galilean School of Higher Studies. The university reports 204th place globally in the QS World University Rankings 2027, fourth nationally in the previous QS edition, and first among Italy's mega-universities in the Censis 2025 assessment; it also placed first in Italy in the most recent ANVUR research evaluation. Its student population amounts to more than a third of the city's inhabitants.